Bruce.Lipsky@jacksonville.com Keith Marks and Amy Moore show three of the floating lanterns that will be launched during the first Jacksonville Memorial Light Festival on Monday night. The event will be held at Yacht Basin Park, 2941 St. Johns Ave., from 8-9 p.m.

Memorial Park, with its iconic sculpture "Life," will the scene of a Memorial Day breakfas. The event is intended to honor war dead, as well as increase public awareness about the 90-year-old park in Riverside.

When Amy Moore lived in Hiroshima, Japan, for a few months, she was intrigued by a particular part of the city’s Peace Memorial Ceremony, staged where the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped.

A highlight of the event was the nighttime launching of lanterns to float on the waters of the Motoyasu River. The lanterns featured peace messages and were intended to memorialize not just the blast victims but others who had passed on.

“It was for peace and remembrance, of anyone who had been lost,” Moore said. “They took hundreds of lanterns and placed them in the river. … It was a really magical event.”

When she returned to Jacksonville, she decided the city that so identified with its river and military community should have a similar magical event. So she and a friend, Keith Marks, founded the Jacksonville Memorial Light Festival, the first of which will be Monday night on Memorial Day.

The event is a new entry on this year’s holiday schedule in Jacksonville, which also includes a city-sponsored ceremony at the Veterans Memorial Wall. Another new entry is the Memorial Park Breakfast, intended not only to honor war dead but to increase public awareness about the 90-year-old park’s history and support restoration efforts.

“People love this park,” said Pattie Houlihan, president of the Memorial Park Association’s board of directors, which is hosting the Monday morning event. “We needed to get out in the community and talk about the park, let people know what’s going on.”

Memorial Park was dedicated Christmas Day 1924 in honor of Florida’s 1,200 World War I casualties. At the time, it was “spit shine and ready to go,” Houlihan said. “Magnificent.”

The 6-acre park was designed by the Olmsted Brothers landscape design firm — who were brought into the project by philanthropist Ninah Cummer — and anchored by “Life,” a large sculpture by local artist Charles Adrian Pillars.

But time has taken a toll on the park, located on Riverside Avenue. The sculpture has undergone several restorations but needs another. The lights on the elegant esplanade were destroyed in a storm, at least one of the live oaks is dying and spray paint can be seen in several spots in the park, Houlihan said.

Restoring the sculpture runs about $60,000, and a restoration of the entire park totals $5.5 million. Last year the association commissioned a master plan for the park and a fundraising feasibility study, she said.

They found out they did not have the public awareness necessary to mount a large capital campaign. So they started planning park events to educate the public about the history and the ongoing maintenance needs of the beloved spot they may take for granted.

The Monday breakfast, the first of those events, will feature a variety of food, a Navy color guard and soldiers laying four memorial wreaths. The keynote speech will be by Jacksonville historian Wayne Wood, who will talk about the history of the park and importance of the sculpture.

That night, about a mile south of Memorial Park, Moore and Marks will bring about 40 wood lanterns to Yacht Basin Park off St. Johns Avenue.

After a few words about the new concept, and their hopes that it become a larger, annual event, they will launch the lanterns to briefly float in the river. A few kayakers will corral the lanterns in the basin to make sure they don’t float out into the river.

The lanterns will be removed after the assembled crowd has had time to remember friends and family they have lost and “send a collective wish for peace,” they said.

“We would like to see this be embraced by the community as something that brings families and community together for something powerful, something positive and something that uplifts and inspires,” Marks said.

I have seen this is Hawai'i. It is an event which is quite touching. I do hope they use biodegradable paper. All that paper is not good for the river.
Great idea. Hope many participate. As for me, it is too hot for me. Cannot tolerate it.